Headless Horseman being on Antiterra a poem by Pushkin, rather than Captain Mayne Reid's novel, one is reminded not only of Pushkin's The Bronze Horsman, but also of his poem "The Delibash" (1829). Here it is, followed by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi's English version. The translator seems to believe that the Cossack is unmounted, while actually he is also a horseman, like the krasnyi (red) delibash who kills him and is killed by him. In her translation, Ms. Bianchi omits the epithet pertaining to the color of delibash's garment, while making the Cossacks "hot" (for the rhyme's sake) and "free-born".

With the hostile camp in skirmish
Our men once were changing shot,
Pranced the Delibash his charger
'Fore our ranks of Cossacks hot.

Trifle not with free-born Cossacks!
Nor too o'er foolhardy be!
Thy mad mood thou wilt atone for--
On his pike he'll skewer thee!

'Ware friend Cossack! Or at full bound,
Off thy head, at lightning speed
With his scimitar he'll sever
From thy trunk! He will indeed!

What confusion! What a roaring!
Halt! thou devil's pack, have care!
On the pike is lanced the horseman--
Headless stands the Cossack there!

Delibash is the Turkish synonym for Hotspur.

Whatever garment Pushkin's delibash is wearing, it is probably not the beshmet of Caucasian tribesmen; all the same, one recalls krasnyi beshmet mentioned in a discarded variant of Lermontov's "Mtsyri":

И под кольчугою надет
На каждом красный был бешмет.

(And everybody was wearing a red beshmet

Under his shirt of mail)

Beshmet is also mentioned in Ada (1.42): "A smiling old Tartar, incongruously but somehow assuagingly wearing American blue-jeans with his beshmet, was squatting at his [Percy de Prey's] side".

Alexey Sklyarenko

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

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